iPhone 3G Launch Fiasco - Part 2
Sunday, July 13, 2008 at 9:38PM 
A bit late but I thought I'd best complete the story of the iPhone 3G launch fiasco from my perspective for posterity.
As you may be aware from my previous post, the iPhone I'd ordered online had been cancelled by O2 so if I wanted a phone, I had to take my chance with everyone else at the O2 store on Friday 11th.
Just to step back a day, the V2.0 of the iPhone firmware had been leaked and I'd managed to upgrade my 1st gen iPhone to the new firmware and access the new App store - magic. From my early exploration, it quickly became apparent that the GPS feature was likely to be a killer feature so I sort of decided that I'd take my chance getting in line on Friday.
Checking with the O2 website for what I needed to bring to the store, I thought it best to take a print out of my account and logged on to do just that. Whilst logged on, I stumbled across a "My Orders" page and lo and behold, there was my online order for the iPhone that I'd been notified had been cancelled.
Thinking there was no way they could screw up so badly, I sent off an email (this is the day before launch) asking them to confirm the onlne order had in fact, been cancelled as the page didn't show any sign of the order being cancelled. I didn't worry too much as the O2 site did say that anyone due for an iPhone via courier tomorrow would receive a confirmation text before 6pm on the Thursday. No worries then!
So 6pm came and went so I decided to take my place in the line on Friday.
I set my alarm for the following morning and went to bed.
I awoke an hour earlier than intended at 5:45am due to the fact I'd set the alarm incorrectly. Ah well, must have been an omen!
I set off for my local O2 store and arrived in the summer rain at around 6:45am.
Luckily, I wasn't the only lunatic and to my delight, found another two people in the queue before me. Always guaranteed to meet a great bunch of people at these events! By 8:02am the line had grown to over 25 people which for a relatively small store, I found astounding! The first guy in the line was Peter McCullogh and Peter shot a short video and posted it to Vimeo.
At promptly 8:02am, the doors were opened and the first four of us were let into the store. As there were 5 staff to 4 customers, I thought this should be quick and painless. Ever the optimist.
So they started to gather details and started to process customers one and two.
As I said, they started but didn't get very far.
All the necessary internal systems they needed to process the orders failed or they couldn't log in.
Can someone tell me in this day and age why a technology company doesn't have the capacity for all of their stores to access their internal corporate systems simultaneously? Now this isn't 13,000 requests per second as they stated they received on Monday, but probably 2 or 3 reps from a couple of hundred stores - unbelievable!
Now at least we were in the store unlike the 20 or so customers left outside.
So we waited whilst the staff made various calls and sent emails to find out what to do.
And we waited...
Thirty minutes in, a quick check on my email and there is an email from O2. Yes, you guessed it!
Dear sir, your online order we said was cancelled has not been cancelled. In fact, it has already been dispatched and should be with you today! We suggest that you refuse delivery so that this order gets cancelled.Unbelievable! So anyway, fifty minutes had passed and the store finally get an email to revert to manual processes and just use paperwork to process the upgrades. Ten minutes later, we're on the street with our new iPhones. The store had 4 16GB phones and approx. 16 8GB phones so I've no idea if everyone in the line eventually got a new iPhone. So I dashed home, way, way behind on my usual production timetable for the weekly screencastsonline show. I swapped the SIM out of my existing phone, plugged in the new iPhone 3G into iTunes and 20 minutes later after restoring my current iPhone image I was away and running. Thankfully I managed to miss the later activation problems that most other people seemed to experience. Another half an hour later and what turns up but the courier with a second 16GB iPhone. With a heavy heart, I turned him and the other iPhone away. So now I have my iPhone 3G fully activated and working. I've been having a play with the 3G and the Apps and the GPS but I'll leave my deliberations on those for another posting. So Apple went against my prediction that they would not go with a "Big Bang" approach to the role out of MobileMe, the App Store and the iPhone 3G. More fool them!
Monday was a bad day for O2 and Apple in the Uk as no sooner than the iPhone 3G launch site went up, it all came crashing down in a big heap.
I considered myself one of the fortunate ones as I was sitting at my mac when the email from O2 arrived in my inbox with a link to logon an snag a new iPhone.
So I clicked the link and was whisked away to a web page where I was able to order a new iPhone (16GB black). I duly handed over my credit card details for the phone and my bank details for the new contract and received a confirmed order number.
Job done!
The next few hours, twitter was ablaze with tweets from frustrated current iphone users who were not having such an easy time. The site was down most of the time, pages did not load, upgrade codes were not working...
Upgrade codes? What upgrade codes?
My earlier email said nothing about upgrade codes?
I bit of digging and it becomes apparent that O2 had sent me a link for a new iPhone and not an upgrade.
I'd bought a second iPhone as a new customer ....D'oh!
By this time, the 02 website was declaring that all stock had gone despite the site being down all morning.
Never fear, I thought, I'll get those nice customer service people at O2 to change my confirmed order to an upgrade. Shouldn't be too difficult.
Email was duly dispatched and at 10:30pm(!) on the Monday night I get a reply from O2 which basically said (my words not theirs):
Updated on the 10th July! See my comments in bold!
So, less than 5 days to go the launch of the new iPhone 3G and people are getting very excited about the new iPhone, the App store and MobileMe.
But let's just think about this for a minute.....
Apples over-riding concern is that the user experience is the best that it possibly can be.
Yes, they've started switching on the me.com addresses but does anyone seriously think they will go with a big bang approach for all the new components on July 11th?
6 million current iPhones all suddenly being able to download v2.0 of the software and millions of people all clambering to download all the free apps from the App store.
All on the day Apple launch their new flagship iPhone 3G.
Do you think they would really risk the ensuing melt down that would happen as the worlds press gather outside Apple stores around the world and watch as people try to access the App Store on their new phones and discover a service unavailable message.
Not a chance.
My prediction is that it will pan out this way.....
iTunes v7.7 will be released this week to everyone, prior to the 11th July.
Yup, I called that one OK but it was a no brainer
The App store will open on the 11th July but will only be available to those people with a new iPhone 3G on Friday as they will be the only people with the iPhone v2.0 software. Apple most likely will withhold v2.0 of the software for the original iPhones for several weeks and will only roll it out in a staged fashion when it is finally released to the existing iPhone population.
A day out, they launched it on the 10th to everybody. So everyone can download or purchase apps but still need v2.0 of the software
Why would they do this?
Well the most obvious is capacity and ensuring they can manage the demand for access to the App store. I don't know about you but I'll be downloading a ton of free apps and a couple of paid for ones, the day I get onto the App store. So by restricting access to protect availability, that would seem like a sensible move.
But you also have to consider Apples masterful marketing dept.
How many people are waiting on the release of v2.0 before they make the decision to go with the new iPhone 3G. My gut feel is that a lot of people are.
How many will still wait to see v2.0 on their existing iphone once they know it's going to be a few more weeks and all these podcasters and bloggers are extolling the virtues of the new iPhone and the delights of the App store? Well call me cynical but I'm sure Apple might get a few more sales in the intervening weeks by withholding v2.0 of the software.
Looks like I was wrong and the v2,0 of the software has been leaked as of the 10th July. Seems fairly certain that it will be available to everyone come 11th July
So what about MobileMe?
Well I figure that the .Mac infrastructure has already been beefed up to cope with the migration of the current .Mac population to MobileMe so we may see the first batch of people migrated this week so they can start to access the Web Apps and will see the push technologies switched on. However, push to the iPhone is dependent on iPhone v2.0 software so come Friday, only new iPhone 3G owners will see push to their iPhone. Another reason not to wait to upgrade perhaps?
MobileMe is the shocker!! The service was due to be down for 6 hours but it's been more like 16 hours - major, major fail on Apples part.
Of course, this is all speculation and come Friday they might just push the button but I just can't see it myself.
I will of course, be upgrading to an iPhone 3G on Friday!
My biggest disappointment on the feature set for the iPhone 3G was the complete and utter absence of any reference to capturing video (OK - as well as not upgrading the camera)
Since then it's been suggested both on the MacJury and the MacRoundtable podcasts, that the provision of video is a feature that may well be addressed by 3rd Part Apps. It has been suggested that video hooks are exposed in the API that would allow developers to create video apps.
The original 1st Gen iPhone was capable from a hardware level and some apps were made available to jailbroken iPhones that allowed you to capture and send video. I suppose I really need to get out of the mind set that if Apple don't provide the feature on the iPhone, it's not going to happen, now that we have authorised applications being developed for the iPhone.
I can now forgive Apple the absence of a syncronised to do list as it looks like the OmniGroup will meet this requirement and more to the nth degree with the launch of